At the May Day rally, the politician accused the government of "helping the richest 1%, to reassure credit ratings agencies and international finance".

She inveighed against a "draconian policy of austerity" that favoured "globalised elites at the expense of the people".

The speaker was not a left-wing firebrand, but the leader of the far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen.

The Front first emerged in the 1980s as a mainly anti-immigration group. Ms Le Pen is careful not to neglect this core issue, but nowadays she frames her nationalist message in anti-globalisation terms.

Under both the right and the left, she contends, France has surrendered its sovereign powers to EU bureaucrats who are setting interest rates and tearing down borders for the sole benefit of big business."The grave diggers of Brussels," as Ms Le Pen put it, "are setting France on the path to under-development".